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Allow changing portal install directory.

1081
4
09-04-2020 07:01 AM
Status: Open
CarlosKrefft
by
Occasional Contributor

There is no way to change portal install directory. 

One of our analyst made a typo during portal install a couple of years ago. He installed portal PROD in a different path than DEV, TEST and QA. So we have to live with this mistake until ESRI provides the ability to change directory.

Why is this a problem?

We waste many hours troubleshooting and testing during extended outages when going to PROD because PROD is different than all other environments. So nothing can be properly tested. Any automation that utilizes portal tools (exe, batch files, etc) will break for us when going to production.

For example WebGISDR backups, will work on DEV, TEST, QA and will break on PROD because the path is different and we have to update paths and retest in PROD.

Same thing happens every time we do enterprise upgrades or server OS upgrades. It makes having these other dev and test environments seem pointless because we're inevitably having to TEST everything in a PRODUCTION environment causing more down time than really necessary.

What we tried:

  1. It's not possible to use WebGISDR tool to migrate to a new server in a new install path.
  2. And it's also not possible to setup a high availability cluster to install portal in a different directory on the second node.
  3. Contacting premium support: They say it's not possible.
4 Comments
JonathanQuinn
by Esri Notable Contributor
‎09-11-2020 10:07 AM

What version are you using? There is a bug related to logs directory being different, which causes a failure:

BUG-000127848 When completing a webgisdr Disaster Recovery/Migration to a secondary Enterprise, and we are utilizing different ArcGIS Server directory/config-store folder structures, we will be met with failure due to the logs folder not being able to find the path it has been configured with.

This is resolved in 10.8.1, but it sounds like it's only the install paths that are different; all other paths are the same. We're removing the following line from the WebGIS DR tool help, because restoring to a site with different install paths and directories has been tested and does work:

  • If you restore to a different machine—for example, if the machine where you had Portal for ArcGIS installed cannot be recovered and you need to restore to a new machine—your installation directory must have the same name on the new machine.
CarlosKrefft
by
‎09-11-2020 11:34 AM

Thanks Jonathan,

We're running 10.8.1 on DEV and 10.7.1 on TEST and PROD. That's correct, only our install paths are different.

So you're saying on my 10.8.1 enterprise, I can:

  1. Create a WebGIS DR backup of my enterprise.
  2. Uninstall portal and reinstall in different path.
  3. Then restore the WebGIS DR backup?

This would be amazing. I didn't try it because of documentation you quoted above. 

JonathanQuinn
by Esri Notable Contributor
‎09-11-2020 11:53 AM

Yes, you can set up "Site A" using the E:\ drive for everything, (install paths, data directories for each component, etc) and then set up "Site B" using the C:\ drive. The machine does not have to have an E:\ drive. Then, take a backup from Site A and restore to Site B. This is what I tested to ensure that the documentation can be updated.

CarlosKrefft
by
‎09-11-2020 11:56 AM

Most excellent! Thank you!